


00h33

by thescrewtapedemos



Category: Electronic Dance Music RPF
Genre: Body Horror, Eye Trauma, Other, Superpowers, Vigilante AU, everything that goes along with danger being involved yknow, inspired by the 2011 australian tour promo vid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-12
Updated: 2016-02-12
Packaged: 2018-05-19 20:09:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5979580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thescrewtapedemos/pseuds/thescrewtapedemos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's not good but he's better than <i>them</i> and he holds on to that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	00h33

**Author's Note:**

> self-indulgent aesthetic wank + my shameship sin, what's not to love. this fic was a test of how many times i could listen to 4h30 before i climb a wall of my own tbh.  
> enjoy xoxo

> so you're feeling tied up to a sense of control  
>  and make decisions that you think are your own  
>  you are a stranger here  
>  why have you come?
> 
> -mikky ekko, _who are you, really?_

* * *

_Tap. Tap. Tap._

The pavement is damp. It’s always damp. Franck keeps his eyes on it, on the dazzle of neon reflected out of the corners of his eyes, the treacherous slick of old newspapers. On his feet, one in front of the other. He’s kind of dizzy, listing a little. He hadn’t slept the night before. Hadn’t felt like eating either. He hasn’t been sleeping much, too keyed up, too much buzzing in his head and under his skin. 

Fuck. 

There’s the squeeze of inquisitive movement in his stomach, in his head with him. The foreign emotion, something that could almost be concern if it weren’t so damn cold. 

“I’m fine,” he mutters and Danger subsides again. Never gone, never, but the twist to his gut he’s sometimes lucky enough to mistake for nausea is quiet again. 

Franck shrugs his hood further over his head and keeps walking. It’s cold, it’s always cold. It’s not just Danger; it’s the city. Cold, damp streets. Unfriendly and unkind. 

He’s close to home. He can make it home.

* * *

The screaming starts when he’s feet from the door to his apartment building and he turns towards it with a sense of exhausted resignation. No one else even pauses in their steps, continues walking with their face towards the pavement or the streetlights above. They pay no mind to the scream, to their fellow human suffering. 

Franck hates them. 

Danger stirs in him again, a sick excited thrash in his abdomen he can feel pressing back against his hands when he has to bend over for a moment and clutch at his stomach to contain it. It likes the screaming. It knows what the screaming means. 

_now_ , Danger says in a voice that isn’t a voice, is Danger in his head and in his bones and in his skin. It hums. It feels _good_. 

Franck swallows and his shoulders hunch impulsively under the coat. His skin is hot. 

“Yeah, yeah,” he mumbles and Danger mutters, an impatient stab through his thoughts that he has to blink away before he can get his feet moving again. “Gimme a sec, gotta… alleyway, gotta get out of sight.” 

_now now now_ , Danger sings in his bones, a vicious shiver that doesn’t help the stumble in Franck’s step as he makes his way into the alley and around the corner of a dumpster, out of sight. It feels like his body is vibrating with Danger’s not-quite voice. 

Danger’s already leaching through the skin of his hands when he looks. Black, shiny-wet, almost like blood out of the corners of his eyes except for how it’s so freezing cold. A shifting oily thickness that grows and tickles against his skin, _becomes_ his skin, flexing and moving _with_ him in a way that sends adrenaline through his system. He can never say if he’s there anymore under the black. His fingers look too long and too thin and sometimes they have too many joints. 

God help him but he loves this, this sick thing riding in him that makes him so strong, so fast. Something _more_. 

The screaming is gone now but Franck will find it. He can do anything, like this. 

He reaches out with a hand that’s not a hand anymore, is a claw, is Danger. Black and fatally sharp and so strong. It cuts into the brickwork, digging out mortar, making a handhold. They rule the city, rule it from the rooftops and illusory dazzle of neon to the sick, ugly asphalt of its cancerous heart. They own it, or Danger gives it to Franck, or Franck uses Danger to take it. 

He’ll figure out the metaphor someday. He’s still dizzy with hunger and exhaustion. 

“Alright,” Franck says, Danger says, he can taste the blood-earth of Danger in his mouth and it makes his breath come fast. “Let’s go.”

* * *

He makes it home trailing blood that isn’t his own. Not a lot; he’d stopped Danger this time. Barely. 

Christ. 

He locks his door behind him and isn’t exactly sure why. He isn’t scared of anything anymore. Not anything that would come through the door, at least. Maybe it’s protection, then, but not for himself. 

He stands in his entryway for a long time watching the blood drying on his fingers. He can smell it in the air, thick and metallic and- shit, delicious. Danger’s back inside him, the skin under the smeared crimson pasty white again, but when he licks his lips convulsively he tastes the mud-viscera in his mouth again. 

_hungry_ , Danger says and Franck feels his knees nearly buckle for a moment because he’s so _dizzy_. 

“No,” he says and Danger thrashes, hard enough that Franck gags on it for the first time in weeks. “Shit, I’ll eat, I’m just. No. I’m not doing that.” 

Danger says nothing but it’s slithering through him, a slow churn in his guts that makes him feel sick. It’s angry, he can feel that in his head, resentful and petulant. A dull red glow behind his eyes. He hopes he can eat like this. It’s chancy to let himself get too weak, even if Danger can keep him alive and going so much longer than he could before. Risky to trust so much of himself to Danger – sometimes he’s scared he gets less and less of himself back every time. 

He heads for the fridge. He’s got a package of hamburger somewhere. He can eat that.

* * *

He feels better with the food in him, meat browned lightly in the pan and bread only slightly stale. He feels less hollow and Danger’s quieter in him. The violence and the smell of blood at least have it content for now, a slow thrum of alien thought in the back of his head and under his skin. 

He doesn’t sleep yet, though it’s dark and exhaustion is a painful burn in the back of his eyes. There’s neon outside his window and it’s humming, keeping him awake. Sometimes it sounds like Danger. Sometimes Danger sounds like it. Franck’s dizzy. 

He lays down to make it stop and closes his eyes. The hum is still there, in the dark.

* * *

_City streets, the shine of neon off the shallow scum of water, his footsteps breaking the surface and marking him out. He runs. He’s choking on fear, so alone, so scared and alone. Hurt too, blood running hot and wet down the inside of his arm. Pressing his hand to the deep cut in his shoulder to try to stem the flow and making it hard to balance, making him slam into walls in bright novas of pain when he takes the turns badly._

_The alleys are a maze and he can’t escape them. He doesn’t remember this place but all of the city tastes the same, smog and tar on the tongue._

_He keeps running._

* * *

He jerks awake screaming, thrashes against what’s holding him down. 

It’s sheets, he thinks for a moment, but then he registers the hard floorboards against his back and it’s not sheets, it’s _Danger_. Danger, cold and moving and heavy across his chest, over his arms and thighs. Holding him down in a way blankets never could. Impossibly heavy, Franck doesn’t know how he carries the weight of it inside him. 

He stops struggling; it won't help. The panic stays sharp and fluttering in his throat and chest. Danger must notice his rabbiting heartbeat, Franck feels creeping cold tendrils press against the veins in his throat. Inquisitive. The touch makes him shiver.

It won’t kill him, Franck knows, Danger needs him alive. It's not always a comforting thought. 

“Danger,” he says when he can make himself breathe. “Danger, please.” 

Danger stirs, a heavy roll of motion and in his head a note that could be amusement. Cruel and petty. Danger’s enjoying this. 

_stay_ , it says and Franck has to bite back a whimper. 

“Please,” he says again and his voice breaks. There’s sun coming in the window, he sees and seizes that. Danger doesn’t like the daylight and Franck has work. “Danger, please, c’mon, I need to go to work, you _know_ I do, _please_.” 

There’s a moment of swirling indecision and then Danger’s in motion. Gathering, moving, slithering over his neck and chin and pressing against his lips. Cold, wet, heavy. 

It’s effort to unlock his jaw but he does it, opens his mouth and tries not to breathe as Danger moves across his tongue. It’s happened enough that he doesn’t gag but it’s a near thing, the quick thrust of motion that’s Danger pushing down his throat and inside him. 

He spends a long while lying on the cool floorboards, letting the fear fall away into more exhaustion. Danger works its way back through him in weighty, slow movements. Eventually he rolls himself to his feet. He does have work, work he needs to keep his apartment and buy food. 

Showering is fast, the water as hot as Franck can stand it. Sweat and blood swirls down the drain in brown-crimson ribbons and he scrubs under his fingernails until the skin is pink and raw and clean. Danger is quiet still and Franck is thankful. It's sleeping, maybe, or the closest thing it can to that. Franck doesn’t know if it can, if it needs to. 

He walks to work burrowed into his old coat despite the sun, head down towards the asphalt. There’s a splash of blood on one sleeve, old enough to be brown, easy to mistake for a food stain unless you know what you’re looking for. The material is stiff until he rolls it between his fingers absently, old brown flakes. When he tries to think back he can’t remember when he would have gotten this particular stain. 

He keeps walking, one mindless foot in front of the other, and doesn’t let himself think about it anymore. 

Work is a tiny convenience store, fluorescent lights overhead that sting Franck’s eyes and cold tile under his feet. He misses his coat like this, the little polo shirt he has to wear as the store’s uniform not nearly enough to combat the institutional chill of the air conditioning. Danger’s sleeping still, at least, as he drums his fingers against the cold laminate counter he’s manning. 

Someone buys a pack of cigarettes. Someone else buys a couple of chocolate bars. He doesn’t look at faces, can’t make himself meet eyes and it doesn’t even matter anyway since they don’t recognize him as human. To them he’s just an extension of the cash register. He realizes, when his boss comes in to take over for his lunch break, that he hasn’t eaten all day. 

He buys a granola bar and eats it even though the sticky crunch between his teeth just isn’t appealing. He’s got things to do tonight. The rest of the break is spent smoking at the mouth to the alley behind the store, holding the cigarette to his lips and breathing the smoke in deep and straight to his lungs. It’s the only time Danger stirs, a shiver of motion that’s maybe laughter. It likes when he smokes. 

“You’re so fucking weird,” he mumbles. Someone passing in the street pauses to look at him and Franck stares back blankly until she turns away and hurries on. 

Danger laughs again, a shiver down Franck’s spine that makes his jaw muscles clench and his hands bunch into fists in his pockets. 

He flicks his half-smoked cigarette to the ground, grinds it out with his toe and then heads back inside. He’s got hours to go before the end of his shift.

* * *

End of shift is an hour of torture, Danger impatient and in ceaseless motion through him and behind his eyes. It's thinking something, something Franck can't parse, something that has it humming happily against his nerves like harp strings.

He can't exactly do anything about it. Instead he tries to ignore it, bites back nausea when Danger thrashes harder than usual and hopes whatever it's planning won't hurt too badly. 

Danger pools between his lungs as he steps out the back door of the store at last, eager and waiting as he steps into the dimness of the evening. 

It’s cool again, with the sun down behind the towering blocky buildings. He toys with the sleeves of his coat and pulls in a lungful of city air. Smoke, he can taste it in the air, industrial smog and a million individual cigarettes. He can taste the damp pavement and the movement of humanity, pulsing over his tongue. 

When he looks down at his hands and his nails are already dripping black he’s not surprised. Danger’s moving in him, a swaying purr, volume growing and pressing against the inside of his skull, a buzz building in his bones that Franck can’t breathe through and doesn’t try. He still doesn’t know why Danger’s so excited but suddenly it won’t stop moving, won’t quiet down. 

He makes it a few weaving steps further down the alley before the buzz builds to a roar and the pressure in his head so much that he has to stop, stagger sideways to lean heavily against the walls and press his hands against the sides of his head. 

It’s a new feeling and that’s terrifying. Something that’s never happened before. 

Danger thrashes in him excitedly, unendingly. It’s singing, sharp and shrill and like knives in his bones and over the sound of it singing Franck can hear himself keening because it _hurts_ , it fucking hurts so bad. Hot tears build and then spill, streaking down his cheeks in tracks that turn freezing in a heartbeat. The cold aches in his eyes and he swipes at them with an arm, pain-clumsy, half-blind with tears. 

His wrist comes away smeared in black and Danger sings viciously, victoriously and then everything collapses into a tempest in the dark. 

For a simple eternity of panicked breathing Franck is blind and dumb with pain and fear. 

Thought that isn’t impulse or instinct returns slowly and he becomes aware that he’s on his knees, shoulder leaning against a cold brick wall. He can smell smog again, acrid and ozone. Danger’s singing is gone, back down to a hum and a soft heaviness in him he can never fully ignore. His legs ache and he opens his eyes slowly expecting to be blind. 

It had felt like Danger had burst his eyes. 

His hands are black, he sees first. Danger manifests in impossible claws, splayed against wet asphalt like skinny, poisonous spiders. He huffs out a sigh of relief and rubs at his aching eyes with the heel of his hand. It comes away wet and he’s not surprised at the oily blackness that’s rubbed off on his coat. Whatever happened to him had been entirely Danger. 

“What did you do?” he mutters and Danger thrums in his veins. It sounds pleased. 

_are not afraid of the dark now_ , it says and Franck blinks because he’s not afraid of the dark, he’s _not_ -

He looks up and the alley is inscribed into his vision so starkly for a moment he thinks he’s spent all night on his knees like a wounded animal in this filthy alley. But then he’s looking up, at the sky, and the stars are so dazzlingly bright he has to shield his eyes against the sting of pain with a spindly clawed hand until his vision can adjust. 

_gift_ , Danger hums and it’s still so pleased. 

“I,” Franck says without thinking. His voice is shot to hell with the screaming. “Shit. Danger.” 

_now_ , Danger says and the pleased note is impatient this time. Franck stumbles up to his feet obediently. His body aches but when Danger flexes through him the adrenaline floods like always, the power rising to meet him. He still loves this. He still wants it, wants it too much. 

He climbs as easily as always; a claw sunk into brickwork, wrapping around the railing of a fire escape, a jump to the wall across and then over again until he reaches the roof. It’s different only in that the dark has split like an overripe fruit – let him slip inside it like a native creature, like _Danger_. He can see so much now. 

His eyes are shining with their own light, he sees in the glimpse of a dark window. White and blank and empty. It’s terrifying. He wonders in the distant part of him that isn’t himself and Danger singing in tandem if he can ever see the sun again, if even starlight burns like this. 

He reaches the rooftop and starts running, dirty sneakers digging into tar paper and bloodstained coat flapping behind him. There are people below him, people more evil than Franck can fathom. People he can punish. And the innocents he can protect. He has Danger; he can do that. 

_hungry_ , Danger howls and Franck agrees.

* * *

He falls through his window because the hard light of his apartment entryway had been too much for him to handle. It’s easy enough to climb inside, just the pry of clawed fingers and a quick jimmy upwards and he’s inside. 

He would have been scared, once, of how easy it is to break into his home. Before Danger. Now there’s nothing he’s scared of except what he can do to any intruder that chooses _his_ apartment to break into. 

Exhaustion is poison in his veins and for once Danger is nothing but a slow churn inside him. It had been kind, tonight. Franck had barely had to haul it back from killing anyone, had caught Danger every time soon enough that the only blood on him is his own. A scraped elbow from a jump gone wrong, misjudged in a distracted moment when a mugger had tried to run when they’d been expecting him to stand and fight. 

Whatever it had done to his eyes had probably tired it out, Franck decides wearily and shrugs his coat into a heap on the floor. With his next step he’s shedding his pants and then his shirt is flying across the room to hook over the door and he’s crawling into bed, under the cover. He’s wet with sweat and from running through puddles, achingly cold where Danger is dormant inside him. His breath is chilly when he tries breathing on his hands to warm them. 

Without Danger his body hurts, the bruises and exertion making themselves known in throbbing tension through his spine that he has difficulty forcing to relax. 

He drags the thickest blanket he has over his head and huddles down in the dark and lets the exhaustion roll over him like a tide.

* * *

_The city is still there, always, always above him in its lurching, soaring heights. In the flicker of streetlights and neon signs off the asphalt from the corner of his eyes. In the brush of people against his shoulders, going nowhere, paying no attention, not caring at all._

_There’s something following in his footsteps and he’s not sure what it wants._

* * *

Franck jerks awake and he can taste Danger in his mouth and it’s so dark and for a moment he panics. His flailing arm knocks the blanket aside and he yells in surprise at the bright dazzle of sunlight, throws his hands instinctively over his eyes. 

Pain doesn’t lance through his eyes like he expects, though. They ache, but it’s with leftover exhaustion and grogginess and not at all the dazzling stab of _too much too bright_ he’s expecting. Cautiously, carefully, he peeks between his fingers. He doesn’t trust it yet but hope is leaking through the leftover fear. 

The sunlight is cheerful yellow and it’s- it’s too bright, not _right_ , he can’t look at it for long before it starts to hurt, but… it’s not what he’d feared. 

“Jesus,” he mutters and his stomach growls. Danger nudges a bad-tempered jostle of motion in him that makes him laugh, full and from the gut like he can’t remember doing in a long time. 

He gets up because his stomach won’t stop growling and Danger is grumbling with it. As he passes the open door to the bathroom he catches a glimpse of his own face in the mirror. 

His cheeks are almost hollow, cheekbones pronounced. He could stand a shave and his hair is lank with dried-in sweat and grit. He looks rough, worked-over. The dark circles under his eyes that look like bruises don’t help, nor the pallid color of his skin. He looks like a walking dead man, he thinks to himself with grim humor. 

His eyes are brown.

* * *

He goes to work again and fluorescent lights hurt his eyes less than sunlight does. Somehow that doesn’t surprise him but it does make the shift easier to live through. He even manages a smile up at the man who habitually buys a pack a day. 

He’s rewarded with an unattractive wide-eyed stare but then a little smile in return. 

Danger sleeps.

* * *

He goes out and the city is quiet for once, the streets empty. In some ways Franck is happy; maybe he’s doing something. Maybe his one man crusade – man? he thinks he’s still human but shit, how can he be sure? – is having some effect. Or maybe it’s just a lull before a storm and tomorrow night he’ll be tasting earth and violence on the back of his teeth. 

He runs, runs, leaps and rolls onto the next rooftop. Rolls to his feet with the momentum and keeps going. He can see in the dark again, see his claws biting into plywood to haul himself up another wall and onto another roof. 

Danger is snarling quietly in him, low and repetitive. Not words, just rumbling motion and foreign hunger in Franck’s head. Hunger to run, hunger to fight. Hunger for violence and motion and purpose, and Franck can’t quite untangle what he wants from what Danger wants for a dizzy moment. 

Hunger for blood in the air and in Franck’s teeth. Franck pushes that thought away and forces himself faster and faster. It’s Danger, he tells himself. It’s only what Danger wants. 

He stops for a long time at the edge of a rooftop. There are humans below him, gathered and leaving little wreaths of cigarette smoke in the air when they gesture. They’re quiet; nothing is wrong and they don’t look up. 

Danger hums with interest behind his eyes and he turns away, feeling sick with tension and with the press of hunger leaching into Franck’s belly. It doesn’t subside as he moves in light, quick footsteps away from the group below him. 

He’s the most dangerous thing out tonight. Maybe it’s time to go home. 

He finds nothing on the path back across the city rooftops all the way home and in through his window. Nothing but empty, filthy streets and anxious innocents. He turns carefully away from them. 

His apartment is dark and smells like him. It smells like human skin and earth and just the faintest tang of blood. His own and not his own, something he doesn’t know how he can smell. Danger purrs inside him, the soft rumble of motion through his organs that somehow means it’s quietly pleased. The thought occurs to him that without Danger now he would feel so empty. 

The thought should bother him but doesn’t. A meaningless hypothetical. He has Danger, or Danger has him. 

He smokes out his window even though it’s technically against the rules. The nicotine doesn’t settle him, adrenaline is still flowing through his veins like quicksilver. 

“Chill the fuck out,” he mumbles and drums his fingers against the sill. Danger doesn’t answer. It’s still inside him, almost motionless, and it only makes him more tense. He isn’t sure he’d been talking to it anyway. 

“Fuck,” he repeats and ashes his cigarette in the pristine dish he’d left on the window as a reminder not to do just this. The tension isn’t going to leave until he does something about it and Danger isn’t helping, isn’t saying a thing, isn’t moving at all. 

He’s half-hard already, shucking off his pants and stepping out of his boxers. His cock bobs with the motion and he hisses when he wraps a hand around it. 

He hasn’t done this much recently, too absorbed in what he does every night. Too absorbed in Danger. 

Toppling back on the bed feels good and he shimmies back until he’s fully on it, lays out and stretches just to feel his body move. Danger stirs but it seems muted, far away with Franck’s own hand on himself. It’s not what it had wanted, Franck knows, but it’ll calm Franck down and then he can sleep and then tomorrow... 

He wraps his hand tighter around himself and rolls slowly into the grip, enjoying the physicality. Closing his eyes helps, ups the simple pleasure. He thinks about nothing, then thinks about hands that aren’t his own on him, living skin and sweat and laughter in his ears. 

He drifts on the fantasy for a long while, rides the lightning sensation of his hand moving on his cock and the tightness growing in the base of his gut and balls. It’s someone else’s hand on him, someone else pressing him down against the bed and touching him with teasing hands, jerking him off with easy slowness. 

He tries a flick of his wrist that sends off a flare behind his eyes and he moans in surprise, too loud. He bites down on the meat of the palm of his hand to hold in the noises. 

It tastes earthy and when he opens his eyes in the blind dark he sees that his hands are black and clawed. 

Fear and shock, sudden, that he hadn’t even noticed Danger reaching through his skin. And it feels so good, like something molten pouring through him. The hand around his dick feels alien on his body and he can’t stop, can’t make himself _want_ the motion to stop, but he knows with sick certainty that even if he did Danger might not let him go.

The noise he makes is desperate and he squeezes his eyes shut again, hand tightening around his cock. He doesn’t want to look to see if Danger’s there too, if the hands that feel so far away and so different than him touching himself are _Danger’s_ hands right now. God, Christ, he just doesn’t want to know. 

Danger laughs and Franck yells with it, a sharp noise he muffles with a clawed hand. Danger’s voice had been like a physical touch, all over except not, _inside_ him. Claws prick against his cheek and he sobs out a breath, squeezes his eyes tighter shut and strokes himself faster. He can smell blood and dirt, the smell of Danger, the swell of repulsed fascination in the base of his gut. 

He opens his mouth without thinking about it, bites down again. 

The pain is nothing, a thrill in him that has his spine arching and his eyes opening again in the dark. He can see in it suddenly, the darkness blossoming and peeling back and welcoming him in. He can see the blackness dripping down his wrist. It’s alive, moving, rippling and flaying against his skin, blurring what’s Franck and what’s Danger. 

Danger laughs again and Franck’s eyes roll back with it, with the bone-deep movement in his body.

“Please,” he mumbles against the slickness of Danger and he can taste it on his lips. Fertile, rich, bloody, so delicious and his cock jumps with it, twitches against the hand around it. He sucks two clawed fingers into his mouth desperately and it’s Danger that reacts, a flex through him almost like the spark-burn when Danger is pushing out through his skin and changing him. It’s a bass rumble in his bones, orgasm cresting over him dark and evil. 

“Please, please,” he sobs out, incoherent around his own fingers in his mouth – Danger’s fingers, the claws pricking against his tongue and cheeks. Pain bursts behind his eyes, bright and erotic, and then blood is trickling against the back of his throat and Danger _screams_ through him, sounding victorious, sounding conquering and pleased. Franck cries out with it and arches back against the sheet, fisting his cock viciously one last time. 

_franck_ , Danger says, says into him, and Franck’s whole body convulses as he comes. 

He comes back to himself wet with sweat, heaving, mouth full of blood and Danger. He’d cut his gums, he discovers with some cautious probing with his tongue. Deep but not too much so. It hurts and he pokes at it again dreamily as he curls up on himself. 

There’s semen on his hand when he brings it up to his face. White, wet and cooling. He doesn’t know why he had expected it to be black but he had and so he tastes it, absently. Danger hums, amused, pleased, sated. 

_franck franck franck_ , it says and Franck closes his eyes.


End file.
